News : RAGBRAI route to include Vinton, Mount Auburn and Shellsburg

The pass-through towns of the 2015 RAGBRAI route have been announced, and along with Vinton, Mount Auburn and Shellsburg will welcome the thousands of cyclists who pedal across the state.

On the RAGBRAI web site route listing, Day 5 includes the following:

Day 5: Cedar Falls to Hiawatha

Rise and shine with the cows, kangaroos and wallabies at Hansen’s Farm Fresh Dairy on the edge of Hudson. (Only one of those animal groups is for milking; the others, well, not so much.) The Holsteins help produce the dairy’s popular cheese and ice cream, including the Snickers variety preferred by city councilor Kate Wyatt (whose brother, Mark Wyatt, leads the Iowa Bicycle Coalition).

Riders can have another scoop or two at Tootsie’s Ice Cream on the main drag in La Porte City, or head a few doors down to the La Porte City Bakery (known for classic glazed doughnuts) or the Kramer Sausuage Co. (known for Bavarian-style brats). Across the street is the FFA Historical and Ag Museum, which houses 8,000 square feet of displays about the Future Farmers of America (or, technically, many of the past and current farmers who used to belong to FFA).

From there it’s a quick blitz through tiny Mount Auburn and on to Vinton, where the Vinton Depot and Train Museum explains, among other things, a few hobo symbols RAGBRAI riders might find useful. The town is also home to Iowa Educational Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, formerly the Iowa Braille School, where Laura Ingalls Wilder’s sister Mary once studied.

Some of the best bites in Shellsburg can be found at Divine Decadents, which sells various chocolates and cheesecakes (apricot amaretto, anyone?).

And then on to Palo, the site of Iowa’s only nuclear power plant, and the day’s final stretch to Hiawatha, a fast-growing suburb northeast of Cedar Rapids. Host committee member Kelly Friedl said most of the RAGBRAI activities will cluster in and around Guthridge Park, although ambitious riders can log a few more miles on the Cedar Valley Trail, south to the bigger city and north to smallish Center Point.